Is the process of the B2B buying cycle complicated?
In fact, it doesn’t have to be. Most agencies will tell you otherwise. We have found the “koyok” of your B2B pain.
B2B sales/ buying cycles are different from B2C but it can be seamless.
It includes several stakeholders with different agendas. Couple the aversion to gambling with the new trend of buyers researching enormously before communicating with the seller and that is today’s B2B selling environment.
You cannot be shoving products and solutions down people’s throats using high tech jargon via sales guys or digital. A change of strategy is needed from your marketing and sales teams. Inbound marketing is a method of drawing customers to products and services via social media marketing, content marketing, and search engine optimization and branding. It replaces traditional marketing’s practice of engaging in no small scope of a possible audience in the goal of capturing a sale. Inbound marketing is more effective and significantly less expensive than traditional marketing, and it blends in with the new buying trends.
Inbound Marketing: What the heck is that??
Inbound marketing covers marketing automation, content marketing, email marketing, and content marketing to build a relationship and trust. Sellers nurture a relationship with prospects by providing useful content that addresses the most pressing concerns and questions from your target audience. For best results, sales and marketing must work together.
The goal of inbound marketing is to lure potential buyers to your “cure” earlier in the buyer’s journey without directly “selling” to them. You have to ensure your solutions solve the problem if not what is the point of trying to sell something. Remember, you are not a snake oil salesman. Instead, you are going to position yourself as the authority for your industry and everyone else is pretty much useless. You should create highly appropriate content to your quintessential buyer and during the lead nurturing, and qualification process, you must continue to provide additional information. You earn the awareness of your prospective customers rather than to demand it.
- No selling or overt promotion.
- Don’t talk about yourself; talk about the solutions to the prospect’s pain points.
- Inbound is sharing knowledge and useful one that is.
- And creating an offer that they cannot refuse.
- Making your competitor look irrelevant.
Inbound marketing lets you maintain the adrenaline of the sale going. Its effectiveness is the effect of your deep understanding and interpretation of your target audience that describes and informs the relevance of your content.
The Benefits of Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is recommended than traditional outbound marketing and cold calling. Companies that use inbound methods generate three times the number of leads at a much lower cost as well.So:
- A well-crafted inbound campaign provides measurable, repeatable results.
- You generate more qualified leads that are near the end of the sales cycle.
- You have many fewer inadequate leads for sales to exhaust time on.
Marketing automation efficiently tracks a variety of metrics that tell you how well your content is performing. Because it is so simple to configure and make modifications to an online campaign, you can perform or create A/B testing; by publishing two different versions of almost any content to see which generates more effective results for your marketing campaign. You can also use a marketing agency as well if you are not sure on what or how to execute it.
Inbound marketing adjusts with the online research movement that has been expanding for years. Through general internet research, over 70% of B2B buyers start accumulating information on their issues and potential solutions. Their research may be 90% complete before they ever reach you. To build awareness, you need to create content for them to find.
More advantages:
- You have a continuous lead generation to your website.
- You gain insight into the ROI of your marketing budget.
- You can advance your lead acquisition based on data.
- You obtain more about your leads during their buyer’s journey.
Inbound marketing increases your brand’s visibility online through the power of different traffic methods like SEO, SEM, Digital ads etc and keyword research tied to your content. Publishing a new material regularly can help improve your search engine ranking faster, and resulting in more potential customers will see your brand, service, or product. Google loves new content and so does the general audience anyway.
It’s All About the Marketing Funnel
This is to provide the right content and segment prospects; hence the inbound marketing uses the sales funnel, the customer’s journey through the funnel is commonly listed into three parts:
- Top of Funnel – TOFU
- Middle of Funnel – MOFU
- Bottom of Funnel – BOFU
For example, these kinds of free content work best at the top of the funnel(TOFU):
- Social posting
- Blog posts
- Short videos
- Infographics
- Nice content
You may start gathering a small amount of information from prospects that would be enough to allow you to start a nurturing campaign through email, while they go through their journey to the top of the funnel.
You can start providing premium content as they receive your nurturing sequence emails, in exchange for more information that would help you learn the prospect’s business and pain points. Content for the middle of the funnel (MOFU) gives value Prospects at this stage are willing to exchange information to attain:
- White papers
- Ebooks
- Webinars
- Case studies
- ROI Calculator
- Technical evaluation/assessment
This is important because what you get from them will build your mailing list. As they say, the bigger the list, the more money you can make. The “money is in the list y’all!”
They have determined their issue and established a short list of solutions, as prospects get to the bottom of the funnel (BOFU). At this point, you want to give content that concludes their choice. They need product specific information that controls any objections and would assist them in reaching a decision.
- Demos
- Product videos
- Testimonials
- Competitor matrices
- Free trials
On the smooth or rocky way through the funnel, you have gone from giving thought leadership and educational content to more alluring and distinct content that assists prospects in specifying their issue and educates them on potential solutions. Lastly, you obtain the chance to “sell” and promote your offering as the best solution for their problems.
Ready To Start?
Are you ready to perform some real action that can sway your audience and get them to be part of your list?
- Identify what questions your content needs to resolve and develop a customer persona, which is a well-researched example of your ideal customer.
- Make an audit of your existing content and determine any gaps.
- Establish content to supply the deficiencies and reuse old content in a new approach.
- Go through the best social media networks to share your content
- Determine the appropriate metrics to measure how well your content executes.
Each segment of content can be shared on a social media platform and premium content placed behind a form. Build a landing page and link to it from your social media accounts or nurturing emails, to provide your prospect with a chance to give you more information. Ensure it is a highly converting landing page if not you are throwing money away. Traffic without conversion is akin to flushing money down the toilet.
To monitor and record the performance of your content and website, use an analytics suite like Google Analytics or another analytics tool. Use the results to modify the content and measure the ROI on your traffic.
B2B using inbound works now and is working effectively. Yes, we understand that everyone is inundated with content but it is your duty to ensure your content stands out so that even though there are tons of distracting content cast by your competition, yours will stand out like a gem in the dirt. Be that content that is like one in a million. Create something wonderful today. I am sure you can because you can be THAT one in a million!
